Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Pardon me please please if you lurk here and are nominated and I don’t know that you’re visiting, but I wanted to wish congratulations to SBTB Bitchery Readers and SBTB reviewed authors for their 2006 RITA nominations:

Stephanie Feagan, nominated for Best First Book: Show Her The Money.

Lani Diane Rich, nominated for [Best] Novel with Strong Romantic Elements: Ex and the Single Girl

Lisa Kleypas, who might not read this site but Candy and I dig her anyway, for Best Short Historical Romance: It Happened One Autumn

As I said, if you read and are nominated but I don’t know of your readership, please delurk and we’ll give you some mad props. And, above all, discuss, folks: what do you think of the Rita noms this year?

How do people meet each other nowadays? Am I the only one thinking that the internet will become a major dating arena?

I know no fewer than six couples who met online and are blissfully happy. From match.com to jdate to eHarmony - take the stress of personal interaction out of the equation, and people seem to be more honest, clearing away the pretenses prior to having a face-to-face meeting. Even the amazing woman who boards my dog, who is as down to earth and genuine as they come (the woman, not my dog), met her new husband on eHarmony. And she is the first person who would tell you that meeting someone online sounded like a complete pipedream (no pun intended).

If you live in Romance Novel Land, your hero could come galloping up to your castle astride a mammoth horse named “Thor” or “Pixie-squeak,” or perhaps he raids your father’s company, buying it out in a hostile takeover. Or maybe you get sucked back in time and he almost runs you through with his manly lance. Or you run a bed and breakfast and he stays as a guest, writing his book. Or you both work as magicians and he saws you in half with his manly saw.

In real life: perhaps you work together? You shop at the same store and check each other out? Or you both work as role players in fake towns built for military training?

Me, I met Hubby in high school. Then we worked at a summer camp and ended up permanently together. Not really the stuff of romance – although, I will say, as far as a plotting method to keep the hero and heroine together all the time, working at a summer sleepaway camp guarantees the protagonists will be seeing each other ALL the TIME. And there will be plenty of opportunity to sneak off and do some scrumpin’—if you know what I mean.

Would I look for a spouse or partner online if I didn’t already have one? Absolutely. Many of my closest friends (*koff koff* Candy *koff koff*) are people I’ve met via writing online.

But does that make for good romance? Is one of the fantasies of romance novels becoming the face-to-face chance meeting that didn’t originate on a website profile?

And, how did you meet your spouse/partner?

An eagle-eyed Smart Bitch reader has noticed that Kinley MacGregor’s Sword of Darkness has a pretty prominent blurb by Sherrilyn Kenyon on it.

Given that MacGregor and Kenyon are the same person, I don’t know whether to give the ole girl a pat on the back for her ingenuity and bronze balls, or laugh and cringe at the tackiness. The wording on the blurb is pretty damn clever. I imagine MacGregor WOULD write fantasy in much the same way Kenyon would....

YAY and YAY AGAIN and THANK YOU to all of you who are spreading the good word about Bill Napoli. I don’t know about you, but I feel a certain warm glow from napoling this asshole, even if it’s merely figurative.

For those of you who, like me, feel like you have a very real stake in this but don’t live in South Dakota and/or have your hands tied because you can’t vote, may I suggest that you throw whatever spare cash you have at these fine organizations, who will likely be challenging the abortion ban law and need all the help they can get?

Planned Parenthood
NARAL-Pro Choice
ACLU

Anyone else have other suggestions for other worthy organizations, as well as more direct action we can take, besides feeding, watering and petting your local reproductive freedom activists and civil rights lawyers (if you’re not one yourself)?

Note:
I’m going to leave this entry and the the napoli entry stickied for a couple of days, which means it’ll stay on top, even though we’ll post new content. That ensures it’ll get maximum visibility for just that much longer for people who are visiting this for the first time. Regular trashy novel bitchenating will resume soon; just scroll down to get to it.

Updated to add:

I checked Blogsnow because we were getting a bunch of hits from that site, and HOLY SHIT, Y’ALL. The Bill Napoli definition page is coming in at number 8 for “most linked to page.”

I shit you not. I took a screencap for posterity. The close-up is below; click on it to get the full screencap.

Again, thank you. Y’all motherfucking rock.

I don’t usually use Smart Bitches to overtly rant and rave about politics; this site is for romance novels, after all. But I’m going to make a special exception for Bill Napoli, a Republican state senator for South Dakota who had these words of wisdom to say about acceptable rape exceptions for the abortion ban:

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

An acquaintance of mine, Sylvia, referred to this as “hella rape,” which is quite possibly the best damn phrase I’ve read all year.

At any rate, fuckwittery should not go unrewarded. I’m thinking we should do to Napoli what Dan Savage did to Rick Santorum. The nifty thing is, Napoli himself has provided an excellent definition. I propose the following entry be entered into the lexicon:

napoli (not to be confused with the proper noun, which indicates the Italian city)
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): napolied
Pronunciation: nA’poli

1. To brutalize and rape, sodomize as bad as you can possibly make it, a young, religious virgin woman who was saving herself for marriage. 2. To hella rape somebody.

Etymology: From State Senator Bill Napoli’s (R-SD) words on an acceptable description of rape that would merit an exemption from South Dakota’s abortion ban.

Now, popularizing this term is going to take a little help from you guys.

First of all, I’ve created a little page with the definition for “napoli.” LINK TO http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/billnapoli with “Bill Napoli” as the anchor text. The link should look like this:

Bill Napoli

This is known as Google-bombing.

Second of all: Urbandictionary.com. I’ve submitted the entry, and it’s currently awaiting editorial approval. Once it’s up, I’m going to post a link here, and I hope enough of you guys vote on it that it becomes the top result for “napoli.” (Gawd, I feel bad for Napoli, but...not bad enough.)

And feel free to refer people to both the Bill Napoli definition page and this page, of course.

C’mon, everybody! With a little help, we can hopefully make napoli the new santorum.

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Cassie Edwards Articles

• A centralized document of the Cassie Edwards texts (Rev. E, 2/21/2008, Tracks 22 Books, Added a Table of Contents)

One Big-Ass Bastard

• Bill Napoli, who’s a real sexist ass-hat
• Engaging in some friendly Googlebombing
• Another Napoli Update
• Smart Bitch Endorsed Art Auction
• WE WIN AT THE INTERNET